Virtual Assistant Blog

Zerys

Posted by Mica Harvey / Content Writing Services

Zerys.com is a content marketing platform that caters to marketers, agencies, and writers. For entrepreneurs and marketers, they offer quality content at affordable rates.

The Ohio-based company was co-founded in 2007 by Steve Lazuka, who remains on as president. They target business and blogging customers and agencies who need to keep up with steady demands for high quality written content but don’t have the time to produce it themselves.

Services

Zerys has grown to full-featured content marketing resource. While the primary service remains content writing, the company has added a number of tools to help customers make the most of their blogging efforts.

For instance, they’ll help you brainstorm the best topics and titles for your articles, even giving keyword suggestions on what search terms might result in the most traffic or social sharing.

After your content is created, the new Zerys Service Marketplace helps you find professional editors to refine and polish your content to make sure it’s in your voice. Then, you can approve and publish your content to your website with 1 click.

Zerys Intro Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc7hxv5FeWI

Plans and Pricing

Writing projects on Zerys begin at $0.01 per word, or $5 for a 500-word article. However, at those low rates, you’re not likely to attract top talent to your job.

As the rates increase, to $0.05 or $0.10 per word, your odds of receiving high quality work improve dramatically. Writers are scored on a 5-star rating system, with 5-star writers commanding the highest rates.

In submitting your work, you’ll also notice there is a parameter for how much baseline knowledge or research is required. Highly technical topics or in-depth research will necessitate higher prices.

But given the marketplace dynamic, there’s always a chance a 5-star writer takes on your lower-priced project if they need the work.

With Zerys’ SmartPost system, you can enter in your “starting price” along with the maximum price you’re willing to pay. Zerys will then post your job only to the highest rated writers, at your starting (lowest) bid offer. If no writers accept the offer, the system will gradually increase your bid — up to your pre-set max price — until someone takes your job. This means you’ll get the highest quality writers, at the lowest possible price.

Every Zerys article comes with a 100% satisfaction guarantee; you only pay if you’re 100% happy.

How it Works

1. Join the Zerys network and submit your article title or topic.

2. Use the SmartPost marketplace system to find a qualified writer, or select one your Favorite writers to do the job.

3. The writer will create your content and send it back for your review, often in less than 24 hours.

4. Review your content and either accept it, request revisions, or reject it outright and try someone new.

5. Export the content or publish it directly to your WordPress, Hubspot, or other integrated website.

Zerys Alternatives

There are other content writing marketplaces, including HireWriters, GhostBloggers, TextBroker, and more.

One of the top-rated services is the subscription-based writing service Copywriter Today.

Your Turn

Have you worked with Zerys? If so, please share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

Microworkers

Posted by Mica Harvey / Project-Based Virtual Assistants

Microworkers is one of the top micro-jobs sites online. Since it’s creation in 2009, Microworkers has hosted more than 10 million micro jobs to more than 500,000 workers worldwide.

The company is based in Dallas, Texas, but manages a truly global marketplace of micro-employers and employees.

Nearly two-thirds of the workers live in Asia, and they log on to the site to perform the requested tasks each day.

If you own an online business, a blog, or simply need referrals or votes for your favorite contests or programs, Microworkers is definitely the place to come and have your small tasks assigned to the thousands of active workers who are ready to complete your job.

Services

So what kind of work can you get done on Microworkers.com?

I personally found the Microworkers site horribly lacking in explanation and detail. From what I can tell, it’s like an Amazon Mechanical Turk type of set-up, where you can upload bulk tasks to your “campaign,” and either have one Microworker or multiple workers complete it.

In that sense, there’s a crowdsourcing element. For instance, you might ask 5 microworkers to look at a picture and tell you what color the shoes are. If 4 people say they’re brown, odds are they’re brown and you can safely tag that picture or use it sometime you have a need for it.

I’ve heard stories of Zappos using Mechanical Turk to proofread user reviews and standardize the formatting and capitalization, and I imagine you could use Micrworkers in a similar way.

Some work examples they give:

Commenting on your blog or YouTube video.
Reviewing your new product.
Upvoting your content on social bookmarking sites.
Write an Article
Discuss, Review or Comment on your product or service in a forum or in other blogs
Follow you on Twitter
Sell forum signatures to you
Blog about your product
Put your banner or link on their website
Upload or Download videos, applications, etc
Bookmark your website (Digg, Buzz, etc)
Join a Facebook group, Like your Facebook page
Add someone to Facebook, Myspace, etc. friends list
Vote for you, for a contest entry, an article, image or video
Sign up with your referral link
Subscribe to Newsletters, RSS feeds

Now that’s some interesting stuff, if not a little spammy.

For instance, if you’re competing in a marketplace where the ranking algorithm is at least partially driven by downloads and reviews (Amazon and iTunes come to mind), employing Microworkers to help you gain some initial traction could be a viable strategy.

Plans and Pricing

Micro jobs on the platform range about $0.10 up to a few dollars, depending on their complexity and how long they might take to complete.

Microworkers is free to join for both employers and workers, and they take a 7.5% fee on each completed task from the employer, and a $0.75 fee to approve your campaign in their marketplace.

Now I’m trying to rack my brain on what kind of $0.10 jobs like the ones listed above I could get done! I’ll be sure to report back once I’m able to out the service personally.

Microworkers Alternatives

Like I mentioned above, Mechanical Turk may be the closest alternative, though they have some rules and safeguards in place that specifically forbid asking workers to download any files, for example.

Unlike MTurk, Microworkers has pre-defined job categories with different minimum payments depending on the complexity and the time efforts. Jobs which do not ﬁt in any of the categories can be submitted as other.

Your Turn

Have you done any outsourcing or crowdsourcing with Microworkers? What did you have done? Please be sure to share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

What We Want in a Virtual Assistant, According to 2700 Survey Responses

Posted by Mica Harvey / News

For the past 5 years, I’ve been asking people a few questions on this site in the hopes of pointing them in the right direction on their virtual assistant search.

Perhaps ironically for a site dedicated to delegation and outsourcing, I answered every survey result myself for the first 3 years. (Now I have Fancy Hands do it for me!)

But over that time, I’ve collected some interesting data in what readers of this site are looking for when it comes to a virtual assistant.

I removed the duplicate entries and found this nice little upward trend on the number of surveys submitted over the recent life of this site:

So what did I ask? Read on.

What Type of Work Do You Need Done?

The first question I ask is, “What type of work do you envision your virtual assistant primarily doing for you?”

The options are:

Mini-projects or tasks, such as online research, scheduling, or travel planning.
Ongoing support, such as bookkeeping, article writing, SEO, or other business processes.
A one-time project, like building a website.
I’m not sure.

And the results:

Nearly half of all respondents were looking for ongoing business support, while another 40% were trying to find help for smaller tasks.

A handful of people were looking for virtual support for a one-off project, and surprisingly 1 in 12 respondents said they weren’t sure what a VA would do for them.

(My book has a laundry-list of potential tasks to get your creative juices flowing.)

These results match up pretty closely with my own virtual assistant usage. I tend to outsource primarily business functions, but occasionally tap into some task-based help for personal stuff.

How Many Hours per Week?

Next up, I ask how many hours a week people envision for their new hire. This is important to get a sense of how much work they have to offload, since some companies are better for full-time support, while others happily take on smaller workloads.

The options are:

0-10, or on-demand as needed
10-20, regular part-time help
20-40, an integral part of your team

And the results:

As you can see, almost two-thirds of respondents are looking for very part-time help. I think it makes sense to start small and ramp up as you gain trust and comfort in remote delegation.

The remaining piece of the pie are those looking for 10-40 hours of virtual assistant support each week. If you’re in that boat, I feel your pain, and know what a relief it will be to get that work off your plate!

What Kind of Working Relationship Sounds Best?

Different VA companies have different approaches, so it’s important for me to find out if potential employers are looking for a dedicated hire or if they’d be OK with a pool of assistants handling their work.

The way I phrased this is, “What kind of working relationship with your VA would be best?”

And the possible answers are:

A dedicated assistant would be better, so I can train them to meet my needs and establish an ongoing relationship.
A different person can do each task, I don’t care as long as it gets done.

Here are the results:

Three out of four respondents indicated they’d prefer to work with a dedicated assistant, and I tend to be in the same boat. Though I’ve used — and continue to use — pool-based assistant services (like Fancy Hands), the bulk of my outsourcing is done with one-on-one assistants.

I think the prospect of building a long-term relationship and having someone get to know your business and your processes can be immensely valuable.

On the flip side, if you’re having a hard time imagining what a pool-based service could do for you, think along the lines of rapid template-driven customer response, proofreading, research, flight check-ins, or reservations.

Where Do You Want Your VA to Be Located?

When it comes to outsourcing, does the golden rule of real estate still apply?

While location can be important for language and time zones, I think the biggest advantage of the global talent pool is that you can find great people from all corners of the world.

So I asked readers if they cared where their prospective VA would live. The possible answers were:

I don’t care, as long we can communicate.
I would prefer to work with someone from the US, or at least a native-English speaker.
USA, all the way.

And in the end, these were the answers I got:

The majority of respondents were geo-agnostic, which usually opens the door to some healthy cost-savings.

I’ve worked with dedicated virtual assistants in Pakistan, Panama, Eastern Europe, the Philippines, the UK, and the US, and can safely say that communication always trumps location.

Paying more for a close-to-home VA doesn’t necessarily mean higher quality right out of the box. In fact, I’ve been severely disappointed by some “local” VAs and VA companies when my requests come back nothing how I imagined. In those cases, I have to turn around and look in the mirror because I clearly didn’t explain the job well enough!

Your Turn

How would you answer these questions? What have your outsourcing relationships looked like so far? Do they match up with the rest of the Virtual Assistant Assistant readers?

Let me know in the comments below!

Assistant Match

Posted by Mica Harvey / US Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies

Assistant Match is a staffing agency that matches business owners with pre-screened US-based virtual assistants to help them manage details of their company in a flexible, cost-effective way.

The company was founded in 2007 by Katie Gutierrez Miller and has a management team spread out across the country. (Practicing what they preach in remote work!)

Katie explains their service targets “small businesses and entrepreneurs who need help with administrative tasks, bookkeeping and marketing plan implementation.”

About Assistant Match

Assistant Match provides a recruiting service businesses and individuals in need of professional administrative assistants, executive assistants, project coordinators, marketing assistants, editors, sales assistants, social media assistants, and client relations assistants.

These remote team members will work from their home offices and report directly to you.

One big advantage is there is no ongoing commitment or minimum hours requirement. You can have you assistant work 10 hours one week and 2 hours the next, with no penalties.

Services

How it works is you submit your job requirements and let their team find the qualified talent to fill your position. They do all the legwork of screening applicants, doing initial interviews, and checking references before they present you with the best of the best matches for your role.

Assistant Match can help find American virtual assistants with a wide range of skill-sets, including organization, accounting, marketing, customer service, transcription, personal assistance, and more.

They’ve helped fill hundreds of virtual staff positions over the years, and provide skills-training and best-practices to both the VAs and the employers.

Plans and Pricing

The company charges a one-time match fee of $395 ($95 of which is required as a deposit to begin your search). Beyond that, the hourly rate really depends on the job you’re hiring for.

For example, basic administrative assistance starts around $28 an hour, while more skilled tasks like writing, editing, or online marketing might run $40 an hour or more.

Assistant Match also handles the time reporting and invoicing, billing you directly for the hours your assistant works. They promise to take care of any tax questions and even find you a new assistant if/when one is needed.

Assistant Match Alternatives

In terms of the US-based competition, there are definitely plenty of choices. Assistant Match aims to set themselves apart from traditional in-house recruiting or even freelance searches by offering a “done for you” model.

It’s a flexible work model that allows you to scale up or scale down the hours as needed. If you have a more consistent workload, you’ll probably find some cost savings through a service like Zirtual.

However, you may not be able to find those advanced skills.

Your Turn

Have you worked with Assistant Match? If so, please be sure to leave a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

VirtualAssistants.com

Posted by Mica Harvey / Dedicated Virtual Assistants, US Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Resources

VirtualAssistants.com is a jobs board and directory listing specializing in virtual assistant positions. The company was founded in 1999 by Belinda Stringer in response to the rising tide of dubious “work from home” scams online.

(I had a feeling they’d been around awhile given the choice domain name!) They pre-date The 4-Hour Workweek and The World is Flat by at least 7 years … helping people find virtual assistants before the term even went mainstream.

In fact, the company was one of the first “virtual” job boards and has helped connect thousands of home-based staff with employers across the country. VirtualAssistants.com maintains an A+ rating with the BBB.

The service is headquartered in Ohio and the virtual assistants are nationwide — US-based only.

How it Works

With VirtualAssistants.com, companies and individuals seeking a US-based VA can post their job for free and receive proposals from the qualified members of the site.

One cool thing is you can select how “virtual” you want your candidate to be — meaning you can elect to only see applications from candidates within a certain radius of your business.

Services

As a prospective employer, you can use the site for either ongoing or project-based work. Around 200 jobs are posted each week, and the company pre-screens them before they hit the board to make sure both the role and the employer are legitimate.

That screening process is one element that attracts a quality pool of virtual assistant talent to pull from.

I asked Belinda if there were any service areas they were particularly strong in, and she explained, “Our focus is administrative; customer service, website help, social media, transcription, etc. But we have extremely talented VAs with experience in telemarketing, research, editing/proofreading, writing, medical coding/transcription, tech support, accounting, and more.”

As with any jobs board, the range of experience and qualifications will vary, but you have the freedom in your job description to spell out the exact role you envision along with the desired skill-sets.

Once you collect the applications, you are free to screen candidates, schedule interviews, negotiate rates, and make your hiring decision. From that point on, you’re working directly with your VA in a virtual-employee relationship and paying them directly; there is no markup or management cost from VirtualAssistants.com.

Plans and Pricing

VirtualAssistants.com is free for employers. They collect a membership fee (regularly $15 a month) from the VAs so they can get access to the job listings.

From the employer perspective, that barrier to entry — however small — helps improve the overall quality of your applicants. You know that the virtual assistant applying on your job has at least made a small investment in his or her business and takes it seriously.

The typical hourly rate for a qualified US-based VA can range from $12-50/hour and up. In this case, it’s up to you to negotiate salary terms, hours, and conditions directly with your new VA.

As an employer, you may get fewer applicants than on alternative directories or the big freelance sites, but in general you should expect a higher caliber of candidate on VirtualAssistants.com.

The VAs like it because even though there’s competition and always will be, there’s not the sense of it being a race to the bottom on price like you might elsewhere.

Your Turn

Have you hired anyone through VirtualAssistants.com? If so, please take a minute to leave a short review of your experience below.

iMark Interactive

Posted by Mica Harvey / Technical Assistants

iMark Interactive is a WordPress support and maintenance company based in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.

The company has been in business since 2009 and provides support to WordPress site owners all over the world.

From ensuring backups are running smoothly, making sure your security is up-to-date, and making CSS style changes and bug fixes, iMark Interactive has the technical bases covered, allowing you to focus on other areas of your business.

About iMark Interactive

The company was founded by their current CEO and President Grayson Bell. Their target customers are businesses or entrepreneurs with WordPress sites looking for a monthly plan to take all their maintenance worries off their hands.

The company is US-based, however, some of their staff work remotely outside of the US giving them some flexibility in the skill sets and time zones they have available.

When you submit tasks you’re not matched up with a dedicated assistant, rather your problem will be handled by the most appropriate assistant. They expect most tasks to take up to 30 minutes, for longer jobs you can ask for custom quotes.

Services

Most WordPress support companies cast a large umbrella over almost any WordPress-related task and iMark Interactive does the same.

Common service requests include:

WordPress blog setup
Web hosting transfers
General maintenance/support
Theme optimization
CSS style changes
and much more

If you have any questions about specific issues I suggest just firing off a quick email first, but otherwise it’s safe to assume Grayson and his team will be able to fix your problem.

Plans and Pricing

iMark Interactive has five different monthly pricing plans,. Below is a summary of packages available at time of publishing:

The monthly plans are as follows:

Ready – $27/month – This plan includes daily/weekly backups, plugin/theme updates, monthly security scan, email support, 5% discount on their hourly rate, and 30 minutes uptime monitor.

Aim – $47/month – This plan includes all the services in the Ready plan, along with some additional minutes, an additional 5% discount on their hourly rate, 5 small jobs, and free access to Genesis themes.

Fire – $87/month – This plan includes all the services in the Aim plan, a 15% discount on extended projects, unlimited small jobs*, and access to Elegant themes for free.

Bullseye – $127/month – This plan includes all the services in the Fire plan, along with an additional 5% discount on their hourly rate taking you to a total of 20% off the standard price should you need support beyond what’s included in your plan.

*As with most WordPress support companies there is a throttle to the unlimited jobs included in their plans. A small job is any job taking up to 30 minutes to resolve and you can submit one at a time.

iMark Interactive Alternatives

A couple of other US-based WordPress support companies to check out are Zen WP and Access WP. Both companies offer a similar array of service packages and one-off fixes.

Where iMark really stands out is in the lower price point tiers. If you don’t realistically need “unlimited” support each month, the “Aim” plan above starts to look pretty attractive.

Your Turn

Have you worked with iMark Interactive? If so, please leave a review below to help others with their decision.

48HoursLogo

Posted by Mica Harvey / Graphic and Web Design Services

48HoursLogo.com is a crowdsourced marketplace for custom logo, web, and print graphic design services. The company began in 2010, is headquartered in Shanghai, and has hosted more than 15000 design contests so far.

The target clientele is small business owners and startups in need of affordable graphic design work. Designers have contributed more than a million concepts for review, with more added each day.

How it Works

With 48HoursLogo, an invisible global army of freelance design talent works to fulfill customer requests.

If you need a logo created for example, you can put your request up on the site and start a design contest. Within 48 hours — hence the name — you’ll have a variety of design concepts to choose from from designers all around the world.

You pick the winner and they get the prize money.

Plans and Pricing

Pricing for 48HoursLogo.com is a little misleading because they prominently display the promo text “starting at $29” on their homepage and marketing material. However, the minimum contest prize is $99, and they tack on a 15% fee for facilitating the contest, bringing the true minimum cost up to $114.

The “starting at $29” is just their minimum “down payment.” Even though you’ll eventually be paying at least the $114, you can technically get started for just $29 — and only pay the balance if and when you’re happy with the results.

The higher your award, naturally the higher number of entrants you can expect to receive. A $99 prize will typically attract around 10 participants, according to the company.

If you pre-pay for the contest, instead of waiting until the end, you can also attract more entries because the designers will know you’re more serious.

Customers can also contract with pre-vetted designers through the site for an hourly rate.

48HoursLogo Alternatives

The best known competitor is 99designs, which runs a very similar crowdsourced, contest-driven business model. The differentiating factor with 48HoursLogo is the speed and the pricing.

Customers and designers like the quick turnaround time because they’re not waiting around for days and days to find out which design won.

With 99designs, your minimum investment for a design contest is $299, and those contests reportedly receive an average of 30 submissions. For turnaround time, their contests stay open for about a week.

Other alternatives to consider include Fiverr, Crowdspring, and LogoGarden.

Your Turn

Have you hosted a design contest on 48HoursLogo? What did you think? Please consider leaving a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

Why I Finally Hired an Accountant (Again)

Posted by Mica Harvey / News

Accounting is one of the first things most business owners hire out.

The tax code is so complex — and the penalties for messing up so severe — that it just makes sense to bring on an expert, right?

Well this might surprise you, but for the last 8 years, I did all my bookkeeping, taxes, and accounting myself. Even as I sit here advocating delegation in most other areas of your business, this was one role I held on to.

Why?

The reasons boiled down to a bad experience with a local CPA a few years ago, and my own cheapness.

A bad experience years ago

After moving to California and setting up shop here, I interviewed a few local accounting firms and settled the one that made the best impression.

However, once we started working together, the owner and I didn’t really see eye to eye on what the scope of the relationship should entail. I was looking for a consultative partner who would more than pay for themselves by giving me strategic tax advice.

And really, that’s what I’m looking for in any hire. It’s supposed to be an investment, not a straight cost.

But this CPA was really more of an order taker and just filled the numbers I supplied her into the appropriate forms. For this service, she charged a healthy upfront retainer and $200 an hour.

After the second year of this, I could see which numbers were going into which boxes, and since she wasn’t offering any sort of strategic guidance, I cut ties and started doing it all myself.

The DIY years

It just didn’t seem like I was getting enough value relative to what I was paying her. Was this how all accountants operated? Are there any who operate on a “performance basis”, taking a percentage of the tax savings they uncover instead of a flat hourly fee?

Parting ways with my local CPA coincided with a downturn in the business, so the cost savings were important to the bottom line as well. Why spend the money if I still have to do 80% of the work?

For years, I filed all my returns myself. I did the corporate returns by hand and our personal returns with Turbo Tax. I haven’t been audited to find out, but in the back of my mind, there was always this question of whether or not I was doing everything right.

Every tax season, it would usually take a full weekend day (sometimes more) to complete the returns, and perhaps a half day for the business stuff. This is one area where TurboTax shines; they store all your information from previous years so if things are similar year-to-year, you can get it done pretty quickly.

But where TurboTax struggles is they try and make it too dummy proof. Sometimes I don’t know the “right” answer to their questions. Should I account for something this way or that way? Which way is best?

So between the time spent, the anxiety, and the business looking up again, I started to keep my eyes and ears open for some help.

Do I need a bookkeeper?

One role I’ve never really considered hiring for is bookkeeping. And the reason is I actually really like doing it.

Maintaining my spreadsheets and keeping track of all the income and expenses as they happen is oddly satisfying for me. And on top of that, I can see daily how my month, quarter, and year are shaping up in terms of profitability.

Related: Here are our top online bookkeeping services.

But I knew I could use some help on the tax planning side. By simply following the form inputs my first CPA did 8 years ago, was I leaving money on the table or paying more than I needed to?

Finding a new accountant

I actually connected with my new accountant through a podcasting friend of mine. Every month he’d share a different tax tip or strategy on my friend’s site.

Because he was focused on giving value upfront, he’d built up a lot of trust in my mind before we even spoke. And it helped that he was familiar with online businesses like mine, a concept I’m not sure my old CPA ever fully grasped.

When I finally reached out to explore the possibility of working together, we had a free 30-minute consultation. He said a couple things during that free call that ended up saving me thousands of dollars, so it became a no-brainer to hire him after that.

It turned out my years of stubborn do-it-yourselfing had cost me quite a bit in the name of not spending money on professional help. The trouble is how do you know if someone will really help you!

In this case it was easier to see because this CPA was well-versed in the online marketing world and had done a great job of providing actionable tips for free. I reasoned, if this the advice he’s giving away online, what will he come up with when he really digs into the numbers?

And as a bonus, he charged quite a bit less for the corporate and personal returns than my local CPA did years ago.

Your Turn

Did you do your taxes yourself?

If you’ve worked with accountants in the past, what did you like or dislike about the experience?

Noon Dalton

Posted by Mica Harvey / India Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies, Virtual Employees

Noon Dalton is a virtual assistant and business process outsourcing company in India, with call center support in the Philippines and a front-end sales offices in Florida and New York.

The company gets its very-non-SEO name from its two co-founders, Jehan Noon and Edward Dalton. With extensive experience in consulting and outsourcing, they founded the company in 2009, and it has grown to nearly 200 employees occupying a 30,000 square foot facility.

Noon Dalton Services

Noon Dalton focuses on outsourced business and admin support for small and medium businesses. In particular, their college-educated virtual assistants specialize in real estate, financial services, recruiting, and social media.

If you have processes in place and need help executing, or have things you need to get done but don’t have time, these guys want your business. The company aims for low-turnover, long-term relationships, which keeps both the agents and clients happy.

Each client is assigned a dedicated VA, and their work is managed by an on-site quality assurance team. You interface directly with your VA, but have management and process-support accessible should the need arise.

Noon Dalton is excited about their new facility in the Philippines, built specifically for phone-support virtual assistants.

Plans and Pricing

Although the company is a little coy about pricing, I was able to get the inside scoop from Jehan. (These are ballpark figures, and subject to change.)

You can choose from either a full-time plan or a half-time plan, and can select your preferred working time zone as well. The full-time plan includes support 6 days per week, Monday through Saturday, totaling around 200 hours per month

An entry level VA (perfect for routine admin tasks or data entry) is $1250 per month, or just over $6 an hour.

A more senior-level VA with more client-facing experience or advanced skills is around $1700 per month, or around $8.20 an hour.

These rates are similar to what you’ll find at other virtual assistant companies in India at the entry level, which is what most firms advertise. Even at the higher end, which might be at a premium relative to the competition, it’s still kind of crazy to imagine being able to hire a college grad full-time, 6 days a week for $8.20 an hour.

What value could that deliver for your business?

Noon Dalton offers a 3-day free trial on personal plans, plus there are no long term contracts; everything is month-to-month.

Virtual Assistant Assistant Exclusive: Mention referral code VAA to extend the free trial offer to 5 days!

Businesses are encouraged to start small, especially if it’s your first time outsourcing, to get your feet wet with delegation and management — and then ramp up the engagement as growth necessitates.

For an inbound or outbound calling VA in the Philippines, the rate is around $1750 per month for full-time help.

For part-time (half-time) help, please contact the company directly for a quote.

Notes

Noon Dalton won the 2013 New York Enterprise Report award for Best International Operations, and was recognized on the 2013 SmartCEO Future 50 list.

Your Turn

Have you worked with NoonDalton? If so, please be sure to leave a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

My New Email Virtual Assistant

Posted by Mica Harvey / News

This year I’ve been letting a new VA into my inbox.

I felt like I was fighting a losing battle against the constant barrage of email, and even though I had what I thought to be a pretty robust system of filters and tags, it was still taking up a ton of time every day.

A little over an hour a day, 7 days a week, according to RescueTime.

Time to Hire Help?

Several friends have recommended getting an email VA — someone to help sort through incoming messages, craft simple replies, and essentially serve as a gatekeeper so you only have to see the messages that truly require your attention.

So I took their advice.

And in the few months we’ve been working together, I’ve been pretty impressed with my new VA.

In fact, she’s saved me from over 2000 messages so far.

But here’s the kicker: “she” is software, not a person.

How it Works

It’s a tool called Sanebox that plugs into your email account, analyzes your inbox behavior, and begins sorting the messages it deems important from the ones it thinks are probably less so.

And while there have been a few false positives in both directions, the sorting algorithm is crazy smart.

In my case, all the “not important” messages are dumped into a folder called SaneLater.

You still have full access to all your incoming mail (I was worried about missing something), and I tend to check that folder a couple times a day.

If I find something miscategorized, I just drag it back to the main inbox.

(Or vice versa, and the system learns for next time.)

There’s also a folder called “Blackhole” where you can drag messages you never want to hear from the sender again.

My Results

Now I’d heard of Sanebox before but never tried it until this year, when they reached out to sponsor my podcast.

I figured if I was going to do a convincing ad read I’d better test it out and see how it worked … and honestly it’s hard to imagine going back to my old way.

And more importantly, according to RescueTime, my time in my inbox is down 2-3 hours a month. I’ll take it!

Your Turn

If you want to give Sanebox a shot, they put together this special deal for you:

A 2 week free trial (no credit card required) + $25 off any paid plan.

They only condition is you drag emails from me back into the main inbox 🙂

Check it out and let me know what you think!

«‹73 747576 77 ›»